BAGHDAD — Court is in session, the Hon. Naim Hasan Salman presiding -- that is, if the lights stay on and the defendants show up.
Neither is guaranteed. Frequent blackouts carve chunks out of the court day, and the American forces who control Iraq's prisons are too tangled in logistical and security concerns to release many defendants for trial on time.
As Iraq struggles through a severe crime wave, the courthouse in Karkh, a district in the capital, is a reminder that the criminal justice system is not ready for prime time. Overwhelmed investigators are stymied by the onslaught of violent offenses. The quality of their cases is so questionable that judges -- who also operate as juries here -- convict only 40% of the accused.
Bodyguards patrol hallways to protect both judges and defendants from assassination and blood feuds. Meanwhile, insurgents are targeting police investigators with suicide bombings and street shootings.
On this day, the courthouse has both electricity and a handful of defendants. So Judge Salman and his fellow black-robed jurists on the three-judge panel take their seats. Ninety minutes later, they have freed two accused thieves for lack of evidence and ordered two other cases continued because witnesses were too scared to testify.
Back in his office, Salman, an amiable, 20-year veteran of the bench with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a booming voice, philosophically notes: "One hundred percent justice is with Allah only."
Saddam Hussein's government generally left the country's criminal courts alone. Political show trials and detention cases were handled by a parallel system of "intelligence" courts. The government could afford to ignore the criminal courts -- street crime was a rarity under Hussein.
The government allowed the judicial system to proceed as it had for decades -- under the Napoleonic code, in which judges conduct questioning and mete out sentences in accordance with existing laws. The defendant has a right to trial in open court and to confront the accuser. The prosecutor and defense attorney act more as advisors than advocates.
Now, with killings, kidnappings and carjackings up since the fall of Hussein, those who work at the Karkh courthouse are just trying to keep up. The courtyard of the squat, two-story building is usually crammed with people waiting their turn in the civil or family law courts. The sole felony trial courtroom, one of a handful of criminal courts in Baghdad, is off to the side, behind a plain door.
